A recently released study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project offers some unique, troubling and counter-intuitive  statistics about teenage social media use. In a broad sense, it showed that teenagers have a decreased concern for social media privacy and growing disillusionment (specifically with Facebook).

The study also shows that teenagers may have much more specific challenges than typical users and are using some unique coping mechanisms to deal with those.

Teens have HUGE networks on Facebook

The Pew study was a follow-up from a study conducted in 2005 and 2012 (with different participants, of course).  Here are some of the most interesting findings:

○ Teens are much more likely to share everything (name, address, email, school, photos) on Facebook that earlier studies in 2012 and 2005.

○ Less than 10% of teens are concerned about online privacy

○ 24% of online teens use Twitter; boys more likely to have an account than girls

○ 39% of African-American teens use Twitter compare to 23% of white teens

○ 60% of teens keep their Facebook profiles private

○ Most teens don’t understand how their social data is used by third-parties

○ 80% of teens don’t use Facebook lists and send all content to the entirety of their networks.

○ 60% of teens use cloaking techniques to communicate with their friends on Facebook

○ 25% of African-American teens use pseudonyms on social networks, compared to less than 5% of white teens

○ 33% of teens report a meaningful experience on social media brought them closer to someone; 18% report a troubling experience with a stranger

○ The median number of Facebook friends for teenagers is 300, Twitter connections is 79

There are a lot of interesting aspects of this study. The lack of privacy concerns, the (sometimes stark) differences of social media usage between African-American and white teenagers, the CLOAKING….. all of these are fascinating in-and-of themselves. But what I find most compelling are the different ways that teenagers are adapting to this unique and complicated social landscape.

The cost of multiple social circles

What I see in this study is a microcosm of the resentment that many people feel about Facebook in general. The overall experience is poorer, the ad experience is over-the-top, and yet the utility that Facebook provides is so important to people that they stay. But I also see that teenagers are far more prone to use Facebook that previously reported. And despite their discontent, they are sharing more with bigger networks than ever before. So what gives?

The illustration below is from Stephen Wolfram’s recent dissection of Facebook data, and is a distribution of Facebook friends for 15-year-olds. What’s important about this is that every other age analysis up until 50 shows that the majority of network friends are concentrated around their own age. What this means is that these digital natives are growing up immersed in the technology, and have the added burden of coping with social networks that are far more diverse than older people have.

Wolfram showed how most people in his study had three or four distinct social circles that they belong to. The teenage distribution may show that they have more, or have the potential to have more in the future. With recent research showing that appeasing multiple social circles can cause users distress, it will be very interesting to see if teens stay committed to Facebook and whether their coping techniques (like “cloaking” messages) diminish some of the stress that other users report.

In any case, it seems that teens are much more vested in Facebook than previously reported. And in Facebook terms: “it’s complicated.”

I’m curious to know your thoughts about this study or about teenage social media use in general.

Photo by Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia (Reece MastinUploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Illustration by User:ZyMOS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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I’m reading a great book now, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. One of the points that its author Charles Wheelan makes is that oftentimes sound statistical analysis can be made to a poor data set. And I suspect that is the flaw in this infographic.

I don’t think I’m being too controversial to say that women drive the majority of e-commerce and social sharing. Yet this infographic asserts that men are driving eCommerce and social sharing,and that a Google Plus share is worth five times what a Facebook share is and nine times what a Pinterest share is worth. The gender-specific insight contradicts similar analyses from ComScore, Gilt Group, Facebook, Twitter and others. And the social sharing analysis contradicts similar analyses done by Forrester among others.

The most generous explanation that I can make for the data in this infographic are that the users of the AddShoppers platform (the data-set that these insights come from) aren’t a representative sample of the general population. In any case, there are too many outlying data points to take any of these insights too seriously (at least IMHO).

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this infographic or on eCommerce in general.

y Steve Evans from India and USA (Pakistan Textile Vendors) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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A new social media network for dog owners, Where My Dogs At is currently being beta tested. You can download the app for free for iOS or Android at the Apple App Store or Google Play online.

According to a May 19, 2013 report in the Los Angeles Times, This could be the new Facebook or “Yelp for dogs.”

“This may sound like satire, but it isn’t. Animal lovers are a huge market, and many people like to share pictures of their pets — especially on social networks.”

Where My Dogs At was founded by Jonathan Kolker and Gareth Wilson in 2011. This start-up is located in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco or Silicon Valley. They were grad students at USC in the same program. They received funding to start their app from them and then later seed funding from StartEngine.

What’s your take on the Social Media network for dog owners: Where My Dogs At? Share your comments below.

The original post, “Social Media network for dog owners: Where My Dogs At” by Peter Trapasso was originally published on petertrapasso.com
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Peter Trapasso

Social Media consultant at PeterTrapasso.com

Peter is a self-taught social media and wine expert who owns http://PeterTrapasso.com, a social media marketing blog. As part of a 15+ year corporate career in technology he worked for Fortune 500 and startup companies. He is also one of the 75 most followed people on Twitter in San Francisco. And a Top 1% Kred Social Media VIP and Klout Influencer. As seen in Information Week, Yahoo! Small Business Advisor, Google News, Business2Community, and Social Media Today.

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This infographic isn’t the most stylish, but one point in it resonated with me: more than one-third of shared links on Twitter are photos. This makes a lot of sense considering successful content on Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus, but it’s an important reminder that Twitter is more than 140 character posts anymore (I still don’t get #music, though).

Let me know what you think about this one.

By National Media Museum from UK (Beach photographerUploaded by mrjohncummings) [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons
By andrea silva from santiago (MAMÁ) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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Recently I saw a message on Facebook sharing a link to inbound.org. I had never heard of this website before yesterday but added it immediately to my “favorites” list.

I would recommend this site to anyone interested in great content about inbound marketing. Here’s what it’s about:

What is Inbound.org?

Inbound.org is a site where the community shares articles about inbound marketing (the only requirement to join is to have a Twitter account). There is also a lot of information about SEO and broader topics. Inbound.org has strict content  and submission guidelines and after one or two violations of the community rules you will be banned.

“Inbound is a for-fun partnership started by  Rand Fishkin , CEO + Co-founder of SEOmoz and  Dharmesh Shah , CTO + Co-founder at Hubspot. “

I think it is especially cool because well-known people within the SEO industry actively participate: Rand recently did an AMA (“ask me anything’) as did Will Critchlow and Avinash Kaushik. (If you’re not familiar with AMA sessions: anyone can ask questions and get answers, an opportunity that rarely comes along). Inbound.org even lets you see which articles different people consider important (see screenshot below).

Anyone can share articles and the community quantifies their interest with a vote up or down (similar to Reddit). Inbound.org is a great resource to discover wonderful inbound marketing content and to learn about different inbound marketing tools.

Inbound.org also posts inbound marketing jobs

There are also some very interesting job listings (especially in the U.S.) on the Inbound.org  jobs page. For ambitious SEOs, content marketers and other inbound specialists this is a great resource.

Have you used Inbound.org? How have you found it useful? Have you incorporated it into your daily routine?

Editor’s note: inbound.org also has a Chrome extension available here

The original article, “Tip: Inbound.org” by Paula Latifa Heesbeen was originally published on paulalatifa.nl
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By Marcus Quigmire from Florida, USA (WowUploaded by Princess Mérida) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Paula Latifa Heesbeen

Internet Marketing | SEO | Web | Design | Social Media | Travel | Tourism | Mobile | Android | Blogger

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Dear aspiring social media marketer,

I learned today on the Internet that you can make six figures in your chosen profession, and with your future riches I have found a real estate investment for you (spoiler alert: it’s a bridge). First, let’s talk about your future profession:

An egregiously misleading infographic went in to circulation this week with all kinds of wild claims about social media marketing. It proposed a salary range intimating that most people make more that $95K annually among other things. Not to break the hearts of future social media managers now updating their Tumblr pages (in that case I would be breaking their hearts for the second time this week), but let’s look at how misleading some of the assertions in this infographic are:

○ Social media managers must deliver “engagement.” This may be a matter of semantics, but I agree with the authors of the Universal McCann Wave6 study when they point out that “engagement” is an empty term. Maybe they get a pass on this one for using a common cliché, but they’re still describing nothing.

○ Understanding and managing each of 200 social networks is a huge opportunity. Kind of basic math here, but since there are 1440 minutes in a day that allows for 7.2 minutes per platform per day (Notice I factored in mobile and Red Bull by not accounting for sleep or bathroom breaks). Still a short time to deliver “engagement.”

○ 25% of small businesses clients are acquired from social media. Maybe of small businesses in alternate universe, but in this universe that data cohort is a self-reported answer of 150 small businesses that also use manta.com, a social networking / advertising site for small businesses. Also, some pretty reputable sources like this one and this one make this data point questionable.

○ College degree required? First off, the majority of “social media marketers” aren’t exclusively doing social media, at least according to this study and this study. But there is no need for social media marketers to have a college degree, in fact with the pay adjustment that I suggest below it would stand to reason that many social media managers wouldn’t have a college degree (or would be right out of college).

○ Possible Master’s Degree for a social media manager? Really? Maybe this is a good time to talk career progression. Career progression in any field would be to specialize further or to generalize further. Theoretically speaking for PR or Marketing, describe the increasing responsibility that someone in social media marketing would take. I don’t see it. I find it much more feasible that social media would be an entry-level position managed at higher levels. For instance a Marketing Manager or Public Relations Manager…..

○ Which leads to the most inexcusable statistic in this infographic: comparing the salary of the Social Media Marketing Manager to a Marketing Manager or a Public Relations Manager. The median salaries cited on the infographic are $120K and $95K respectively (quick statistics refresher: median is the mid-point implying that half of all people in that job are paid MORE than that amount). Most social media managers don’t do social media exclusively. Of the remaining social media managers, the salary range I’ve seen is $30K-$50K (though HR people more familiar with the job can correct that).

Here’s another aspect to that number. I found a six-figure social media job on Indeed.com. Here are the job requirements:

“The ideal candidate should have a strong mix of agency and/or brand management experience with consumer facing Fortune 500 brands, with significant social media and digital marketing hands-on expertise.”

In other words, the best experience to get into a high-level social media job is to have a solid background in traditional marketing.

If you know social media marketing aspirant and subscribe to the self-esteem movement – show them this infographic and let them know that they can make it if they get that Master’s Degree and learn how to navigate effortlessly between 200 social networks. The sky is the limit if physics were governed by infographics.

Let me know what you think about this.

…and here’s a photo of that bridge :

Photo by Kyle Flood from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Waaah!) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo by Ekbert786 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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A recent study by PayPal demonstrated that half of all respondents couldn’t identify all the websites that were collecting their digital information, with a quarter of respondents reportedly disinterested in internet security and a one third of respondents unable to identify an internet scam.

This study was a small, but it brings up two questions: do people understand the extent of their digital footprint and do people care?

Do people understand the extent of their digital footprint?

Digital companies collect a bevy of personal information. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and others collect information from their organic sites but also from sites that use their login prompts. Credit card companies collect information about every purchase you make. Social influence aggregation tools like Klout gain access to a multitude of social profiles and is able to collect and consolidate all of that data. In fact, the percentage of people who are unaware of how their online behavior is collected is probably closer to 100% (subtracting non-participants).  Challenge yourself to the proposition that this study asked: name every digital property that collects information from your web travels. I can’t with any certainty.

This small-scale study probably gives us a clue of how oblivious many people are about the extent of online data-collection. But my next proposition is even more troubling: how many people care?

Do people care about their digital footprint?

In Universal McCann’s Wave6 study last year, they reported that the United States was at the far extreme of the privacy spectrum with about 65% of people concerned with the amount of personal data that they share online.  Germany, France and Turkey were on the other end of the spectrum with somewhere between 50% and 60% concern about privacy. Depending upon where you live, between 35% and 50% of the population are okay with surrendering private information online. This is good information in theory, but with 1 billion people on Facebook and many others exclusively on other networks,  in practice nearly everyone is acquiescent to these data-collection practices.

What do you think? Is there any value for privacy protection or data protection? To what extent can any information be protected? I’m curious to know your opinion on this.

Photo by Janine from Mililani, Hawaii, United States (footprintsUploaded by Fæ) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo by Grj23 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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Mobile, content, social, authorship. To some extent or another most people understand the importance of each, and I like the way that this infographic makes the case for each…. with one exception. I’m not entirely bought into LinkedIn for content sharing, the average number of social channels per company is irrelevant (because there’s no barrier to entry, no measure of activity and sounds like a self-aggrandized reported statistic), and it’s highly unlikely that 40% of marketers are distributing content on Google+. Which is not to say that social isn’t growing in importance, simply that the arguments for it  could be more compelling.

Let me know what you think. So you agree with the importance of these tactics? Disagree? What do you think about the case that they make for social?

Sam Derbyshire at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
By David Maiolo (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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Small businesses have a lot to gain from social media. Not only do they gain visibility, but thanks to the lesser costs of social media they are also able to invest the money they save on other forms of marketing reach strategies. These additional investments can integrate with social media efforts, strengthening the overall performance of the end result.

What other strategies are we talking about? There’s at least three: content creation, e-mail marketing, and visual content.

Content Creation

Creating valuable content for end users is very important. It shows customers you care and it shares your expertise, which strengthens your trustworthiness in your industry and among your target market. To ensure your content is interesting and relative you want to make sure it speaks to the needs of your potential clients and that it isn’t a sales speech. Having a calendar for your content creation can help keep you on track with publishing and it will allow you to have plenty of new content to share across your social media channels.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing can help you capture leads through subscription and it gives you the opportunity to build your client/business relationships. To effectively implement e-mail marketing in your business and social media strategy you want to make sure you have a set calendar and the writers to produce enough content so that you can stick to your schedule. The worst thing you can do is start an e-mail marketing list and then disappear. It won’t necessarily bring you loss of business, but it will send the message that you are inconsistent.

Visual Content

Visual content includes pictures, infographics, and memes; to name a few. People love these types of shares because it allows them to take part in the brand’s story or the particular moment you’re sharing. It is also more interesting for some people to read information through pictures and symbols like on an infographic. Creating such visual materials isn’t tough, but even here it is best to have a calendar in place and a consistent development.

As you can note, all three efforts underline the need for consistent development. This is a result of businesses gaining the best results from their investment through a consistent online presence. It is also because this format allows you to add to your social media sharing continuously, which makes it new, fresh and interesting.

Business owners and marketers read and come across this type of strategy all the time; when you are updating on the latest news and trends in your industry. If you like your morning reads and the things you share across your own social media platforms, what makes you think your followers and potential clients won’t?

Illustration wee page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Illustration by Edward Penfield [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Maria Florio

Maria Florio is a versatile entrepreneur with various specialties and interests: writer, copywriter, e-commerce inbound marketer, Italy travel specialist and event planner. Her favorite mottos include "Our potential rises to the unimaginable. To inspire, live life, and favor humanity." ~ FNM and “Everything happens for a reason. Every action has a reaction. Always remember that what’s meant to be will always find a way to come.” ~ Unknown. Her biggest passions are life and humanity.

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I used to have a boss that would religiously sneak out of the office at about 10:30 to Starbucks. The sneaking out got more and more brazen until he just started to do it everyday. Management has its privileges, I suppose – and as sore as I might have been about it at the time, think of the money I saved by not going along.

This is an infographic that sensed about 300 people in the U.S. and U.K. about social media habits at work. 300 respondents does not make for a great survey BUT one insight from it intrigued me: do managers use social media at work more often than workers? I’m prone to believe that. And if you believe that bosses use social at work more than workers, then it seems even less reasonable to adopt Luddite practices of cutting off social media sites at work.

I’m curious to know your thoughts about workplace social.

By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
By Robert Neff [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is "social media research," I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred's 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout's most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven't entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

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